Category: Britain

The uk; nice Britain; the British Isles; the house countries: the sort of wealth of alternative names implies uncertainty and competition - and a capability to invent and alter. In a 12 months that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses many of the forces that experience unified Britain some time past. She examines the mythology of Britishness, and the way a ways - and why - it has light. She discusses the Acts of Union with Wales, Scotland and eire, and their boundaries, whereas scrutinizing England's personal fractures. and she or he demonstrates how the united kingdom has been formed via circulate: of British humans to different nations and continents, and of individuals, rules and impacts returning from in other places. As acts of union and disunion back turn into more and more suitable to our day-by-day lives and politics, Colley considers how - if in any respect - the items can be prepare anew, and what this could suggest. in keeping with a 15-part BBC Radio four sequence.

In autumn 2014, these dwelling in Scotland will face crucial political determination of a life-time: even if Scotland turns into an self reliant country once more, because it used to be prior to 1707, or is still in the uk could have profound effects for everybody in Britain. This booklet explores the numerous concerns inquisitive about this significant selection, together with a key a part of the talk that facilities round the query of even if Scotland may prosper roughly after independence. How well to do is Scotland? wouldn't it have a quicker or slower transforming into economic system if it used to be self sufficient? What forex will be used—the pound, the euro, or anything new? What may still its power coverage be? during this neutral and thought-provoking publication, economist Gavin McCrone addresses those and plenty of different questions, that are of important value within the run as much as the referendum.

From Lucy Wadham, the bestselling writer of The mystery lifetime of France, Heads and Straights is an autobiographical story of bohemians, punk, the King's highway within the Nineteen Seventies, and family—part of a chain of 12 books tied to the 12 traces of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates a hundred and fifty years of the Tube with Penguin. additionally to be had in a boxed set.

Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth-century Britain is the social background of the final century throughout the eyes of these who served. From the butler, the footman, the maid and the prepare dinner of 1900 to the au pairs, cleaners and childminders who took their position seventy years later, a formerly unheard classification bargains a clean point of view on a dramatic century. the following, the voices of servants and household employees, principally overlooked by means of historical past, are finally delivered to lifestyles: their day-by-day family workouts, attitudes in the direction of their employers, and to one another, throw into sharp and intimate reduction the interval of feverish social swap wherein they lived.

Sweeping in its scope, commonly researched and brilliantly saw, Servants is an unique and interesting portrait of twentieth-century Britain; an authoritative background that would swap and problem the way in which we glance at society.

Griff Rhys Jones used to be a mountain virgin. So whilst it was once instructed that he may possibly prefer to cross up some of Britain’s peaks, he rightly requested: isn’t there somebody greater certified?

Apparently now not. So Griff was once duly dispatched around the rooftops of britain, Scotland and Wales to discover a number of the roughest, so much laborious – let alone most lovely – terrain, and to fulfill those that dwell day-by-day in such thin-aired wilds.

Climbing the large mountains like Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike and so forth along with gave Griff an perception into the eagerness and devotion our excessive locations encourage – and grew to become a mountain virgin right into a mountaineer. good nearly …

For the 1st time, this cutting edge reference publication surveys the Romantic Age via all points of British tradition, instead of in literary or creative phrases by myself. This multi-disciplinary procedure treats Romanticism either in aesthetic terms--its which means for portray, tune, layout, structure, and literature--and as a ancient epoch of "revolutionary" ameliorations which ushered in smooth democratic and industrialized society.

Sheep are the thread that runs in the course of the heritage of the English geographical region. Our fortunes have been as soon as based on sheep, and this booklet tells a narrative of wool and cash and historical past, of retailers and farmers and shepherds, of English yeomen and the way they obtained their freedom, and primarily, of the soil. Sheep have helped outline our tradition and topography, impacting on every little thing from accessory and idiom, structure, roads and waterways, to social development and wealth. together with his eye for the idiosyncratic, Philip meets the local breeds that thrive during this kingdom; he tells tales approximately every one breed, meets their shepherds and vendors, learns approximately their previous - and confronts the current realities of sheep farming. alongside the way in which, Philip meets the folks of the nation-state and their many professions: the mole-catchers, the stick-makers, the tobacco-twisters and clog-wrights. He explores this artisan background as he re-discovers the geographical region, and unearths a life-style parallel to trendy life, suffering to stay unchanged - and at its middle, continuously sheep.

Chilly conflict: intercourse, Spies and Nuclear Missiles is the tale of england through the most threatening years of the worldwide nuclear standoff – whilst the country stood beside the united states opposed to the may possibly of the USSR.

At the peak of Britain’s chilly conflict, the Conservative executive was once dealt a deadly blow by way of a intercourse scandal regarding the conflict minister, glamorous younger version Christine Keeler and a Soviet undercover agent. The nation’s first nuclear submarine used to be introduced and the Polaris missile method was once acquired. US president John F. Kennedy used to be assassinated, the Vietnam struggle escalated, the good teach Robbers performed Monopoly with genuine cash, Sean Connery was once James Bond in From Russia With Love and Kim Philby was once named because the ‘third man’ within the Cambridge secret agent Ring.

Now chilly battle: intercourse, Spies and Nuclear Missiles, that includes a brand new foreword penned through Keeler herself, exposes the spies, finds the scandals, examines the bombs, the plane and the tanks, and delves into the too usually neglected heritage of Britain’s years because the 3rd international nuclear superpower.

Dan Sharp has labored as a information journalist for 15 years, focusing on politics, crime and armed forces historical past. established in Nottinghamshire, he writes for and edits a number of guides.

Isaiah Berlin was once witness to a century. Born in Riga within the twilight of the Czarist empire, he lived lengthy adequate to work out the Soviet nation cave in. The son of a Jewish trees service provider, he turned a presiding pass judgement on of Western highbrow existence on either side of the Atlantic: historian of the Russian intelligentsia, biographer of Marx, pupil of the Romantic circulate, and defender of the liberal notion of freedom opposed to Soviet tyranny. whilst he died in 1997, he used to be hailed because the most crucial liberal thinker of his time.

But Berlin's lifestyles was once not just a lifetime of the brain. current on the an important occasions of our age, he was once in Washington in the course of global warfare II, in Moscow on the sunrise of the chilly conflict, and eating with President John F. Kennedy at the eve of the Cuban Missile main issue. From Albert Einstein to Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill to Anna Akhmatova, his circle of acquaintances constitutes a veritable who is who of 20th century artwork, politics, and philosophy.

In this definitive paintings, the results of a striking ten-year collaboration among biographer and topic, Michael Ignatieff charts the emergence of a special temperament--serene, comedian, secular, and unafraid--and he examines its impact on Berlin's imaginative and prescient of liberalism, which under pressure the customarily tragic nature of political and ethical selection. A magisterial ebook, illuminating and fantastically written, Isaiah Berlin will stand with the nice sleek biographies.

Withnail and Us charts the adventure of cult in tradition via an exploration of British cult motion pictures and their enthusiasts. it truly is approximately our weird and wonderful and enduring fascination with as soon as vague or stunning videos, from A Clockwork Orange to The Wicker Man. what's it approximately sure motion pictures that provokes such obsessive fan devotion? What impells humans to distant destinations looking for filmic relics? Why do they assemble in teams to re-enact scenes learnt by means of center? Is any movie worthy re-viewing over a hundred occasions? From 1968 and all that, throughout the cultural by-ways of the Seventies, this e-book makes an attempt to give an explanation for such unusual practices, and to track their origins within the makings of a few amazing movies, together with Tommy, the fellow Who Fell To Earth, Quadrophenia, Withnail & I, Trainspotting and Performance. arrange to go into the sector of the unwell!